Sirius Black Sentenced to Life in Azkaban for Betraying the Potters!
Severus stares at the paper on his kitchen table, quietly waiting for anything resembling a reaction. It's been a week now since Lily died and all he ever feels is a weak sadness, a mere shadow of despair. He is a beach at eerily low tide, all the waters of emotion receding so far into the distance that even the horizon seems to meet dry land. Eventually, he's sure, the grief will come crashing down on him like a tidal wave, and when it reaches the shore, everything he is will be inundated with its fury.
For now, though, he is numb. When was the last time he couldn't even muster up anger at the mere mention of Sirius Black? Childhood enmity aside, can't he at least bring himself to hate the man who sold Lily out to Voldemort?
You also sold Lily out to Voldemort, he thinks. Alas, Severus can keep the Dark Lord himself out of his mind, but apparently, he can't keep out his own self-loathing.
He sighs and resumes staring at the black-and-white mugshot of Black, that creepy, silently-laughing face on the front page, waiting, praying, for emotions to arise, something, anything, to fill up this horrid cold numbness inside. He hasn't been able to focus on the words to really read the article again, but maybe if he looks at the picture long enough, his body will respond somehow. Hate, you hate him, remember everything he did to you? Hate always came so easily to Severus, but even that feeling seems beyond him now.
Slowly, fading into the forefront of his empty mind from the recesses of his memory, Severus remembers how that laugh sounded at school, ringing out clear and cruelly joyful. He can hear it even now if he tries, five or more years later.
Severus is hanging upside down in mid-air, so his view of Black's face is distorted but he can still see the glee in his eyes as Potter torments him. Who wants to see me take off Snivelly's pants? It's a shameful memory, so it's seared into his being for eternity; with occlumency he can hide it away but it always seems to spring back into his consciousness when he's least prepared.
A faint spark of shame stirs up from the gray ashes of Severus' regrets, and he realizes that this time, for this, at least, he doesn't have to blame himself… Well, if he doesn't let himself remember how the rest of that afternoon played out, he doesn't have to blame himself. It's nice, if still not exactly pleasant, not to blame himself for something. He grabs hold of this not-quite emotion and fans the embers of his innocence with what tiny strength he can find in his weary, grief-stricken body. He seizes another memory, and then another.
He is walking out of the dungeons after a harrowing morning of trying to unblock the showerheads and there is Black, crowing with glee and calling, "Oi, Snivelly, you're looking extra greasy today!"
He is eating in the Great Hall when all of a sudden his robes, shirt, and vest disappear, and in their place is a lacy magenta brassiere. He glares at the Gryffindor table and there is Black, practically weeping with mirth.
He is reading under a tree by the lake when suddenly he is retching brightly colored, glittering goo. As soon as he stops spewing the bloody rainbow he whips his head around, and there is Black, eyes crinkled, teeth catching the sunlight.
He is walking out of Potions, still scribbling notes in the margins of his textbook, when he feels the familiar jerk of a tripping jinx around his ankles; he lifts his head from where he is sprawled on the floor and there is Black, doubled over with laughter.
Severus still hasn't managed another spark of true feeling, but now his miserable grief-logged brain has caught onto an insignificant detail that is at least more interesting than the well of gaping nothing inside of his heart.
The thing is, Severus knows only too well how Sirius Black laughs at a successful prank. He is not some lovesick fool to have paid such close attention to how Black looked when he laughed, of all people and things, but he sure has enough memories of the git laughing at him seared into his adolescent nightmares that he needn't have paid attention in order to know this anyway. He knows, even, how Black's eyes scrunch tighter and his body shakes harder in strict correlation with the difficulty of the prank and the time spent planning and implementing it. He knows that no amount of repercussion, detention, or alternative punishment is enough to rid him of the gleeful satisfaction that follows a good prank.
The thing also is, the Sirius Black who is laughing up at him from the Prophet looks deranged, and not in the same way he's always been. This laugh looks like the last gasp of emotion from a man who has already expended all his other feelings in a horrible fireball of despair. Severus blinks dully in confusion at that oddly specific description before realizing that this is probably how he, too, might laugh if he could summon up any reaction at all.
The other thing is, the betrayal of Lily and Potter (he refuses to refer to the two of them together as 'The Potters') to the Dark Lord should have been Black's crowning glory of pranks. There could not have possibly been higher stakes or a bigger con than convincing someone you're his best friend even as you hand him over to the power-hungry mass murderer actively seeking to kill him. And though Severus would only ever admit it aloud at wandpoint, it truly was a magnificent deception. Not even the inner circle of the Dark Lord knew that Black was the spy; Severus himself had caught only glimpses of a robed figure during their chicanery but always got the impression that the spy was shorter and less confident than Black- but then again, anyone sly enough to turn Lily and Potter over to the Dark Lord would have to be cunning enough to protect their identity well.
But it just doesn't make sense, because the more Severus thinks about Sirius Black the prankster, the more he also remembers Sirius Black the rebel: the howler he got the first day of first year, the day after he became the first Black in Hogwarts history to be sorted into Gryffindor; the innumerable duels he had with the 'Junior Death Eaters' in the halls; the way Bellatrix and Narcissa used to scheme into the long hours of the night in the Slytherin common room, hoping to draw him back into the fold; the screaming match Black had with Regulus after running away which culminated with the declaration that, 'the only brother I have is James Potter.'
Even with the incontrovertible fact staring up at him from the headline of the Daily Prophet, Severus can't fathom how a boy like that ended up not only serving the Dark Lord but betraying James Potter to do so.
Now Severus realizes that the new sensation rising with a slow creep of unease into his consciousness is doubt. Why does Black laugh so differently now after a deception of the highest scale? Why did he go over to the Dark Lord? Why would James Potter, of all people, be the life Black was willing to sacrifice in his treachery?
Severus stews with the questions for a few more moments, then decides he doesn't like this niggling inquietude; he likes it even less when the person he's concerned about is Sirius bloody Black. He tries to mentally shrug his shoulders at the strange development and his brain, in an astounding moment of solidarity, acquiesces.
Because wasn't it also Sirius Black's idea of a prank to send a child into the path of a raving werewolf? Endangering not only Severus himself but Black's own supposed best friend in the process? He definitely didn't come out of that night with his usual mischievous satisfaction. And more importantly, didn't Black prove at the age of sixteen that he was right willing to kill over a schoolboy rivalry? Is it really so hard to believe that he would set up his other best friend to die in service to one of the most powerful wizards of all time?
To that matter, is it even really a successful prank if it results in the downfall of your lord and a lifetime sentence in Azkaban?
Honestly, why bother trying to make sense of a Black's decisions at all? Madness is known to run in the family.
Severus decides he is content with this conclusion, seeing as he really doesn't have any more energy to spend pondering the convoluted motivations of a man he has hated since he was eleven. Besides, it doesn't really matter. Lily is dead; nothing matters anymore. Severus averts his eyes from the paper and slides gladly back into numbness. He thinks about making tea, decides he doesn't have energy for that either, and sits back in his chair to not-feel some more. The shores of his grief continue to dry out; cracks form on the arid surface; they deepen into harsh, gaping crags and split off into smaller cracks that could scar the deepest recesses of his heart forever.
Tomorrow, Dumbledore will send for him and tell him the Dark Lord will return, tell him that the boy survived, that Lily died to protect him and that he has Lily's eyes. And then the despair will finally wash over Severus, the incoming wave growing taller with each word out of the old man's mouth until it towers over everything else. He will be drowning in anger and anguish and self-loathing and regret, and the waters will wash away everything else, including his strange ponderings over Sirius Black. Tomorrow he will feel again, but he doesn't know that yet. For now, he sits alone at his kitchen table with an abandoned issue of the Prophet, thinks only of Lily with that surreal sad detachment, and waits for the monsoon to come.